Jon Gruden hopes to get the best out of Michael Crabtree

At the end of the regular season, a report from Oakland indicated that the Raiders would part ways with wide receiver Michael Crabtree before the 2018 season got underway.

The Raiders have changed coaches since then and they may also be changing directions when it comes to their plans for Crabtree. In an interview with Jerry McDonald of the Bay Area News Group, Jon Gruden was asked what excited him about the team’s roster and Crabtree’s name was one of the ones that came up in the coach’s response.

“I got to bump into Crabtree. Hopefully we can get the best out of Crabtree and his career,” Gruden said.

Crabtree caught 58 passes for 618 yards and eight touchdowns in 14 games last season and the report about his expected release touched on behind-the-scenes “dysfunction” contributing to the direction the team was taking. If that proves too much to bear, the Raiders would get over $7.7 million in cap space from parting ways with Crabtree.

16 responses to “Jon Gruden hopes to get the best out of Michael Crabtree”

At his best he was a middle of the pack WR, He’s in his 10th
year, HE’s had 2 1000 yard seasons. Gruden should be looking
for a replacement as opposed to wasting time trying to
“coach up” a 10 year old WR.

“the report about his expected release touched on behind-the-scenes “dysfunction” contributing to the direction the team was taking”

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Crabtree was a key contributor to the Raiders 2016 playoff team so his influence was positive or at worst neutral. On the other hand, Lynch was forced by Son-of-Al onto the 2017 Raiders and there’s no doubt in my mind that Lynch’s cancerous presence along with caving into Penn’s holdout were the main reasons for toxic disruption that led an otherwise promising young team to go 6-10.

Gruden has coached the Mercurial Andre Rison and Keyshawn Johnson on playoff teams. He got outstanding Seasons out of both Keyshawn Johnson and Joey Galloway when they were both into their 30s, so this is nothing new to Gruden, who surrounded himself with Jerry Rice and Tim Brown and loves veteran wide receivers. And if you think those guys weren’t tough to deal with just because they’re always portrayed as Class Acts, then you don’t know NFL wide receivers.